Tiger Global in talks to back software startups Fyle, Facilio

The New York-based investment firm has issued term-sheets to the two software companies, according to three people aware of the development.Varsha Bansal&Madhav Chanchani | ETtech | November 02, 2018, 06:00 IST

Tiger Global Management is in advanced talks to invest $5-6 million each in two early-stage software companies—Fyle and Facilio—as it makes a comeback to India’s startup landscape that it was instrumental in nurturing.

The New York-based investment firm has issued term-sheets to the two software companies, according to three people aware of the development.

The deals, if they materialise, would be the firm’s first fresh investments in India since late 2015, and the first cheques signed from its new $3.75-billion fund dubbed Tiger Global Private Investment Partners XI.

Tiger Global has stayed away from making fresh bets in India the past three years, focusing only on its portfolio companies. ET had reported in its September 5 edition that Tiger Global, after reaping rich returns from its investments in Flipkart, was again looking at Indian startups for investments.

While Tiger has tasted success in India from its investments in consumer internet businesses such as Flipkart and Ola, its bullishness in the software space comes on the back of its early investment in Freshworks. Its $50 million investment in 2015 in the software-as-a-service company is now worth $450million, after Freshworks was recently valued at $1.5 billion.

Facilio CEO Prabhu Ramachandran declined to comment on what he termed “market speculations.” Tiger Global and Fyle did not reply to emailed queries.

Tiger Global partner Lee Fixel, who was in India last week, is keen on backing startups such as financial technology, logistics and enterprise-facing ventures from the firm’s new fund, as ET had reported. The fund, which was closed last month, will focus also on consumer internet, cloud computing, industry software and direct-to-consumer companies in India, China and the United States, as Financial Times had reported.

Facilio uses internet of things (IoT) and machine-learning technologies to gather data from buildings to help facility managers understand the performance pattern of each asset, thereby fostering energy savings and improving the lifespans of the assets.

The company, founded early last year by former Zoho employees Ramachandran, Rajavel Subramanian and Yogendra Babu, currently manages facilities spread across over 20 million square feet.

As for Fyle, the company’s platform helps the employees of its enterprise clients track and manage their travel, insurance, local conveyance, medical and other company-related expenses.

Founded in 2016 by Yashwant Madhusudan, who was earlier with Manthan and Capillary, and Sivaramakrishnan Narayanan, a BITS graduate, Fyle has previously raised capital from early-stage fund Pravega Ventures, Japan’s BeeNext and a clutch of angel investors.

Apart from Freshdesk, Tiger has invested in another Indian SaaS startup, Chargebee.

Globally, too, the fund has made some SaaS bets, which include leading a $44 million investment in China’s Udesk, an enterprise platform for intelligent customer service. It has also invested in US-based Green Bits, which makes point-of-sale software for cannabis retailers, and Stripe, a payments platform.

“There are more and more SaaS companies started by Indians that have expanded to the US and are growing, making it an attractive space for investors,” said TCM Sundaram, managing director at Chiratae Ventures (formerly IDG Ventures India) and whose first few investments included software company Manthan. “While several investors earlier focused on consumer tech, now they are looking at both because Indian SaaS companies are able demonstrate that they can go to a developed market and grow.”